


Spinning Gold

by The_Falling_Star



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Mute Frisk (Undertale), Nonbinary Frisk (Undertale), POV Third Person, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route, Slice of Life, Undertale Monsters on the Surface
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:09:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25497361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Falling_Star/pseuds/The_Falling_Star
Summary: Muffet is well known to the Underground as the shrewd business woman who hoards Gold, and to the spiders as their mistress who vies for their freedom.Once the Barrier is broken and her spiders are free, who is she then?
Relationships: Flowey & Frisk (Undertale)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 37





	Spinning Gold

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in the same universe as [From the Mouth of an Injured Head](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23580004/), but it is a standalone story.
> 
> Prompt from the lovely [Cipher of Tumblr](https://cipher-the-sidhe.tumblr.com/post/624474556765241344/wanna-give-me-a-writing-prompt): When you kill Muffet in the No Mercy run, you receive no gold. She didn’t keep anything for herself, instead choosing to whole-heartedly pursue the efforts to reunite her clan so they could all see the surface together. Well, the Barrier has been broken and they are free. What does Muffet the spider do now that she no longer has to spend all of her effort desperately scraping together money to free her family? What is Muffet like when she is free to be anything?
> 
> Everyone always casts her as this greedy hardass... but what happens when we consider that she’s not?

Muffet waited in line at the Ebott Convention Center, along with nearly every other monster who was a former resident of the Underground. The human government had scrambled to find accommodations for the hundreds of monsters who had escaped their former prison, offering beds and shelter here, and proper housing in the weeks to come.

To properly track and distribute such resources, however, the humans had mandated that a Monster Registry be formed. The King and Queen bristled at the idea of providing such information willingly, names had power after all, but as always, monsterkind seemed at the mercy of humans, and so they obliged, deciding it was a price to be paid in return they might finally see human kindness.

A family of rocks rolled off the chairs they had been occupying and away from the desk before Muffet, allowing her and her spiderlings their turn at interacting with the human on the other side. He looked rather haggard, staring incredulously at the departing monsters before his gaze turned back to Muffet.

She offered him a fanged smile, one set of arms clasped behind her back, another crossed in her front, and one waving with a little wiggle of her fingers at the human man. All the while her spiderlings crawled over her legs, across her arms, dangled from silk strands anchored to the hem of her dress, and her pet, Muffin, lay curled at her feet, the large beast nearly dozing off with long breaths like great bellows.

He paled and quickly looked over his shoulder, “M-Mary! I-I’m going on break!” without any sort of acknowledgement he zipped away, out of sight.

Muffet blinked her many eyes.

“Ahuhu~ how rude!” she murmured. The spider on her shoulder chirped an affirmative reply. 

A woman, Mary presumably, tutted and walked up from a smattering of cubicles behind the desks, and without looking, waved Muffet forward, tapping at a tablet and setting it on the desk.

“Our turn, dearies~” she sang, Muffin and spiderlings in tow, trailing like a black, fuzzy, wiggling carpet in her wake.

“Hello, if you could please fill out this-Oh lord!” the woman balked. She paned her gaze over Muffet, her pet, and her assembled clan. She took a deep breath, and steeling herself, continued just where she left off. 

Muffet decided she liked Mary.

“Fill out this form, please be sure to double-check your spelling. This is operated by touch, if you need assistance please let me know, press this button here to advance to the next field, and this one here to go back-”

And so on, the woman walked her through adding her information to the Monster Registry. She paused at one particular line, labeled ‘Occupation’.

“That means what you do for work, to earn money, er, Gold.” Mary supplied at her hesitation.

Muffet’s many eyes narrowed dangerously, her smile thin and fanged, “Fufu~ I know what that word means, deary~” she lilted, “ _Why_ do you want to know that?”

“Uhm, to provide assistance. When monsters pick up their trades again.” Mary stammered, abashed at her presumptuousness. 

Muffet pondered on that.

Humans had no idea what she did. She could claim to be a carpenter or a restaurateur. Who was to say she couldn’t be those things?

What _would_ she do if she could do whatever she wished?

The Surface was a strange place with stranger opportunities.

A tap at her shoulder broke her pondering, a trilling chirping sounding from the small spider.

Yes, of course, she had her family to look after. They were more numerous today, together at last. They must come first.

‘BAKER’ she typed into the field.

* * *

The grand opening of Muffet’s bakery, Grillby’s bar, Lila’s cafe and a handful of other monster eateries were scheduled to take place in a scarce few days, a great to-do put on by the Queen, and everything needed to be _just so._ Muffet strolled around the tiny dining area of her corner bakery, spiderlings crawling along nearly every surface to adjust a display, hang a decoration of ribbon, or tidy a web. 

Everything was perfect, and perfectly in its place.

Her SOUL twinged at the thought.

The bell hung over the door rang out merrily, a small human entering the bakery, a golden flower with tendrils of vines draped across their shoulders.

“Ahuhu~ dear ambassador, to what do I owe this pleasure?” she purred.

The child inhaled, and smiled, surely the scents of sugar and yeast and vanilla that permanently permeated the air causing their lips to tug upwards. They began signing, then paused a moment, poking the flower on their shoulder gently, the small creature groaning and rolling his eyes before speaking on the ambassador’s behalf. “‘I wanted to make sure you have everything you need for the grand opening, and to tell you how to not screw it up.’” the flower was flicked by the human, “Ow! It’s close enough!”

“Oh deary, I have everything perfectly prepared.” she gestured with one set of arms to the bakery, and both of the little ones glanced around. Frisk nodded their head, Flowey appearing rather underwhelmed. “Ahuhu, perhaps a sample might assure you~”

The flower looked quite eager at that.

A fritter provided to each of them, the human signed a gesture with their flat hand pushed away from their chin, which the flower neglected to translate as he was busying himself with mouthfuls of fried dough.

“Iz’zer sill spierr innit?” he asked with a full mouth, crumbs flying as he spoke.

“Fufufu, how uncouth~” Muffet made a sharp chirp and three spiders produced several napkins.

Flowey begrudgingly swallowed and Frisk tried to wipe his face, which earned them a whap from a vine. That made the human try to flick them again, and something short of a scuffle broke out. 

“Dearies, ahuhu~ please don’t make me call in my dear pet~”

That made them stop.

“Fufu~ what is your concern?”

“Are you putting spider dust in the pastries still?”

Muffet blinked, “Oh, but of course!~”

How else would the flavor be just right? It was so carefully mixed into the flour.

“Yeah, don’t tell the humans that.”

Frisk pointed to one of the banners, reading ‘ _Made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders’._

Muffet crossed two sets of arms, huffing, “Ahuhu~, why ever not?”

“Humans get squirmy when it comes to dead stuff. They don’t get that dust is magic, they just think they’re eating corpses.” Flowey shuddered, looking at Frisk, “It’s so weird that you guys have corpses, all limp and gross and shit.”

Frisk frowned.

“Ahuhu~ I suppose I can make an omission.”

Frisk nodded, gave one of the spiderling offering the napkins a brief pat, gave muffet a thumbs up, and departed, the bakery filled only with sweet scents and sounds of skittering legs once more.

Muffet sighed, looking back at the sign that now needed to be altered. 

The Surface was a strange place.

* * *

Business was good.

Half of Muffet’s clientele were the usual monsters, and the other half daring humans. Something about monster food appealed to them, the novelty of it all or perhaps the unique flavor of the pastries, and the strange proprietor of the bakery with her many eyes, many arms, lyrical voice and endless relatives scurrying about.

The humans who hated spiders stayed well away.

Muffin made sure of it.

The days passed, spring turning into summer (seasons! How strange!) and Muffet was...

...Bored. 

Hm, no, perhaps not that, the Surface still had the allure of oddness and novelty.

_Unfulfilled._

Her spiderlings were content. It was warm, there were no barriers or cold to keep them confined, they knew well how to bake, how to work together in tandem, and how to follow her careful orchestration with only the lightest of her suggestions.

Why, she hardly needed to be here at all, if only to take orders.

She could afford to hire a cashier at this point. 

So what was it she’d _rather_ be doing?

The chiming bell made her stand up straight, clasping her upper hands and resting her lower palms on the counter.

“Ahuhu, how can I help you, deary~” she sang, sweet as cider to the human. 

She was getting better at categorizing them. This one was younger, judging by her bright eyes, and her straw-colored hair brushed to one side of her head, the other side shaved short. 

“I was hoping I could place an order in advance?” she asked, with a bright smile.

“Certainly~, would you like an assorted selection?” she waved over the display of the varied pastries with her middle arm.

“I was actually hoping for custom pastries, if that’s possible? It’s my mom’s fiftieth birthday, and she’s a florist, I wanted to have something like a flower arrangement, like this-” the young woman held out her phone, several pictures of cupcakes and cookies and sweet breads all appearing in the form of some flora scrolling by.

That wasn’t something she had ever attempted before.

“Ahuhu~, of course, deary~” 

But when had any challenge ever stopped her?

* * *

Muffet’s kitchen was normally a tightly run ship. Spiders were not ants, she was not a queen lording over her people, any spider was free to come and go as they pleased. Instead they were a family, and she the matriarch, providing a sense of direction more than anything.

So there had been a considerable amount of chittering when Muffet began _experimenting._ She shaped melted chocolate into delicate leaf shapes coated with edible gold dust, and formed frosting into intricate petals. It was making a terrible mess, and there was many a chirp of concern that Muffet was not only permitting such untidiness, but was also its cause.

“Ahuhu~, what do you think, dearies?” she lilted, holding up a cupcake. She was rather pleased with herself, if she set two cupcakes side-by-side, it did look like the beginnings of a bouquet. 

Encouraging chittering sounded from the walls, the ceilings, nearly every square inch were the spiders crawled.

“Ahuhu~, thank you~” Muffet beamed.

This was new.

This was _fun._

* * *

Business was great.

Muffet did hire a cashier, a human boy with a face studded with metal bits, who met every sing-song ‘deary’ with a honeyed ‘hun’ in reply, and who’s colorful arms her spiderlings much enjoyed climbing all over (humans were surprisingly warm).

Which left her time to indulge in her new creations.

She delicately sipped tea with her upper arms while her middle ones carefully piped royal icing onto a tray of cookies, her lower arms trailed toothpicks through the still molten substance, swirling pastel colors in intricate patterns. 

Behind her were cupcakes with frosting piped into ribbon shapes, so carefully formed it looked like someone had actually tied a red bow around the mound of pale buttercream.

Her spiderlings carried yet another tray out to the front displays, scones with candied orange peel spirals and powder sugar dusted over stencils that left shapes in relief, of radiant suns and SOULs and flowers, all things bright and blooming.

Around her were endless canvases, and before her all the opportunity to _create_ whatever new idea flittered behind her many eyes.

It was _perfect._

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Lila is the purple shopkeeper bunny of Snowdin, (and Alex's neighbor).
> 
> This was something chill to write (and I thought it would be the most difficult of the prompts I got...), probably a bit too slow for my usual fare, but we all need a break now and again.
> 
> Find something that makes you happy dearies~💙


End file.
